Defend line on wastewater funds

Battle lines between unfunded state mandates and diminishing discretionary spending power for the county government will soon be drawn.

Monroe County faces a 2015 deadline for the implementation of advanced wastewater treatment in the Keys imposed by the state following a series of poor near-shore water quality reports in the 1980s and 1990s.

When the mandate was handed down the economy in Florida, fueled by an unsustainable building binge and ever-growing tourist areas, had money to spare. But back then, county officials didn’t feel the pinch of the deadline and used their own burgeoning coffers in other pursuits.

When the crunch came, Monroe County began a feverish program of developing large-scale central collection systems.

Then along came the crash and the zip line of funds from taxpayers to county and state coffers broke.

With dwindling resources, the mandate remained in place. The county begged and borrowed every dime it could to build mega-million-dollar central sewer systems.

It wasn’t enough.

Now, we reach the final stretch and the county’s coffers are dry.

Earlier this month, the state “regretfully” announced that it doesn’t see the possibility of either state or federal money coming to Monroe County to aid in the development of the mandated wastewater upgrades any time in the near future.

But the deadline thus far remains.

Local officials believe that the state will continue to offer extensions on the mandate, for at least a little while.

But the county has had more than 20 years to meet the mandate, and while a lot of progress has been made in the last six years or so, the original deadline of July 2010 was long gone before the county reached the halfway point.

And now, the residents of the Lower Keys are staring down the need to meet the mandate. There is no money. There is no money on the horizon. The Cudjoe Regional system, slated to serve 10,000 units and cover everyone from Lower Sugarloaf Key to Big Pine Key, is expected to cost about $150 million. The first pipe hasn’t yet gone in the ground for that syste,

At thus will be drawn the battle lines.

The state’s mandate does not, as was so aptly pointed out by County Commissioner George Neugent, include a contingency clause that the requirement will be met provided the funding is available. The mandate simply states that the requirement will be met.

So the state Department of Health and state Department of Environmental Protection will have the task of enforcing the regulations when the deadline comes and goes again.

That will pit a state agency against Monroe County, with the eventual loser the residents, because county commissioners have vowed they will not vote to move forward on the Cudjoe Regional if the residents have to pay the full cost of the system, a cost no other area has had to bear.

No one as yet knows what form enforcement of the mandate will take. No one as yet knows if the county commission will blink and acquiesce.

The county’s primary financing plan involves tapping taxpayers for two-thirds of the costs anyway, through $5,700 hook up fees per unit and the possible extension of a one-cent sales tax beyond 2018 from which it can borrow more money. The remaining one-third was supposed to come from the state.

The fall back is to add a capital development fee to user bills, meaning every dime will come from residents’ pockets in some fashion with the exception of the portion of sales tax tourists might pay.

And that is completely unacceptable.

The commission appears to have drawn a line in the sand. We can only urge them to hold that line.

With the mandate from the state for wastewater improvements came a promise of money to help with the project. That money needs to follow the mandate.

When the state cones through with what it promised, our commissioners can blink. Until then, the battle lines must be sharply delineated and fiercely defended.

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